Hi Reader,
Joe Kudla built two companies. Both failed.
His third is Vuori, the activewear brand. It is now valued at 5.5 billion dollars.
Same man. Same field, clothing, all three times. So what changed between the two that died and the one that did not?
He has said it plainly. The first two were side businesses. He ran them while he kept his accounting job, a safe salary underneath him the whole time. And that safety net, he says, was the problem. The moment either company got hard, he had somewhere soft to land. He could tell himself it was not working and quietly go back to the easy path. So he did. Twice.
For the third, he quit the job. Raised a little money from friends and family. Went all in, with no salary to fall back on. And within two years, Vuori came within four weeks of running out of money. He was frightened he would lose it.
But this time there was no easy path to retreat to. So instead of quitting, he tore up the sales model, rebuilt it, and the company survived. It has been profitable ever since.
Here is what that story actually shows. Whether a company succeeds was never fully in Kudla’s hands. The market decides that. What was in his hands was one thing: whether all of his effort went into a single plan, or leaked into a backup. The first two got a divided man with an exit. The third got everything he had, because there was no exit left.
A backup plan does not protect you. It gives you a door to walk through the moment the work gets hard. Take the door away, and all of you goes into the one thing that matters.
Name the result you want. Then remove the exit, and feed the one effort that gets you there.
Name the result. TAME the effort.
BJay
See you next week!
PS – If a friend forwarded this to you, you can subscribe at tameyourgoals.com.
